Dear You, a distant strike of lightning. One who has burned my grass:
Mickey and I walked into a bar together —
a dive bar with sticky chairs and nearly no light. The creaking wood was more enticing than the rock that the bartender had chosen. She was a blue-haired woman with a square jaw, and she held her head in hostility — grinding her teeth, dragging her hands across the wooden bar.
“ID’s!” She yelled at both of us.
I wondered why she did that. If I was alone, I’d have my ID out and ready. I was young, twenty-four, and I was a perfect doll. My face may have been innocent, implying that I was much too young to have a beer, but I was dwelling into the spoiled years of a woman.
Usually when Mickey and I were together, no one wanted to question my age, to make a scene of a doll and a man, but this woman held her position.
Mickey pulled out a piece of plastic, but I only had my passport on me. The woman quickly scanned my photo, then she took Mickey’s ID into her hands and massaged it like it was worthy of being destroyed.
He was twelve years older than me– well into being an adult. I wondered if the bartender only wanted to ID me or maybe she was passing judgment on our connection. Was I dressed like a victim?
Do you remember?
It didn’t help that Mickey was in a pout, and he was having an internalized dilemma about his desire for snow. I told him he didn’t need it, though I knew I could not understand his desire; either way, he didn’t want to hear it. He watched the door as I spoke to him.
The bartender slammed down our drinks and demanded the money. Mickey pulled out his wallet; I took out cash for a tip.
Even through the mundane transaction, my head was an asteroid, separate from all other beings, and it was completely drowning in water’s words. I wanted to tell the bartender that innocence and infantilization are not the same thing; I am capable on my own.
Here I am, world.
Here I am: everything I say is designed to realign and release, but here I am to say to you directly: why do you want to lose yourself? Maybe because you are something else… someone else. Maybe you won’t show it to me.
You don’t have to show me. I’m just wondering.
Mickey drowned me away with the downpour of liquor but I hadn’t yet touched my cup.
The bartender growled as she took the cash from the bar and subsequently vacated our sight. We sat alone, and there was something he wanted to tell me. I could tell by the way he slanted his eyebrows, how he watched the way my hands gripped the cup when I finally touched it. Mickey circled his head and scanned the entirety of the bar, but no view seemed to bring him ease.
All around us, there were noises: the music, the tapping of feet, laughter, popping thuds from the dart board.
Not one object was still or content. Not one person was quiet or cool. Mickey was looking at me. His legs were in a T and his foot was chopping at the air. He created himself into a fan, pushing air onto my bare thighs, and I felt fragile as my skin became prickly.
I looked down at my body, at the bumps on my legs, and I wondered why humans get these goosebumps when they’re cold or scared.
I wondered if I would crack like ice.
Am I a girl only because he wants me to be one?
“I need a cigarette,” he told me, sniffing, and that was my cue to hop off my seat and follow him where it was that he wanted to go. I didn’t mind following him, but I wanted him to know that I was a smart girl, too, and I followed him because I wanted to follow him, not because he told me.
He was not fiction, thus he was not an arrow. Mickey was not a portrait that moved and talked, but I really wanted him to talk to me.
I knew that he wanted to talk to me.
We stood outside, watching cars go toward the infinite realm of neon signs — buildings of capitalist detonations. Bars aligned in a row; bars that sang predestined songs at a volume that was distorted and ugly. The sounds blended with the talk of all these drunken crooks that screamed and yelled for no apparent reason. I screwed up my eyes at the noises.
Mickey lit a cigarette, and I stepped away from him as I didn’t like the smoke. Beside him, there was a high stoop, one that he took — effortlessly — and he left me down below. Mickey watched as so many cars brushed past us, and he used their defiance of friction as a catharsis more interesting than a lover — me, and he watched them go by, pressing his thoughts into their trunks, hoping that his fears could drive away in the passenger seat.
He was speaking, but none of it mattered. His hands clutched at a straw. It was squashed and flattened.
In my head, I reminded him that those thoughts wouldn’t be gone; they would have just been transferred to someone else, and round and round a car does go; I guarantee that they will return as they do belong to him and him alone.
Like underwear with one’s name on the elastic.
Why is this hurting me so much to remember?
Your body is crushing the straw, hurting it; your mind is cold.
Couldn’t you just look at your own thoughts? They’re tails are wagging.
Jagged teeth, tongues that kiss.
Presence : Desire.
These thoughts aren’t as scary as they seem.
And if they are…
As Mickey tossed his cigarette back to the earth, a man with a red vinyl cap strutted down the street. He held a large canvas painting in his hands. His skinny legs swung and leaped, and he quickly made his way up to us.
“Hi, how you doing tonight?”
There was a chip in his front tooth.
“This is an original of mine.” The light from the street lamp caught the purples and greens of the canvas but then he pushed the canvas into the dark.
On the canvas, there were rushed strokes of aurora borealis made up for the purpose of monetary manipulation and not by any first hand awe of its beauty, but I could tell by the colors that there was a precision in the way light caused perception. Light made art obvious. Light on his face, as though the man had staged himself directly.
He was a good painter but a better con artist.
Mickey stepped down to meet him.
“I’m selling it for $30 if you’re interested by chance, my man?”
The pronunciation of the price stuck in my head. I looked at Mickey. Mickey gave his attention to the man.
It was funny to be on the outside of the scenario, especially as I was the one who could relate to this guy: I was a painter, too.
Neither of them looked at me, though. It was just me, tied to Mickey’s hand, as though I was an extension of his being– nothing more than the watch on his wrist. He crossed his arms.
Mickey spoke up, “I really can’t right now, you know: car note, rent, bills…” His voice was squeezed yet legato, tired and annoyed, but still contrite and defined.
“I’m colorblind,” I said, trying to subdue my smile but again, only my friends in the shadows heard me. I was listed as unwatched.
Eventually, the man gave up; he walked away. His orange shoes bounced and popped at every nook and cranny of the terrain.
I was left at the foot of the cross.
Mickey felt inside his pockets, and I watched a group of college girls stumble by.
Their heels, though large and defiant, were silent.
I was silent.
What is it like to be a man?
Where am I?
Hello, hello! Sorry, I need to turn back on.
Someone else turned me off.
This is my reality– but Mickey wasn’t listening.
He turned to me, and he was disoriented in his step but quiet with bones transposed by gravity. A warmth entered his hands as he used his fingers to fix his hair, pushing it behind his ears with a softness that was rare from him. He looked genuinely perfect, and I knew he cared about that more than he should.
He had big ears. Big nose. I liked both of those things.
I thought that he was more than beautiful. Hostage of pain; mean to me; humanly beautiful.
An aroma of a smile that had long since faded away.
“Ugh, Iris,” he kicked his cigarette and regained his spot on the stoop. He looked at me, and I wanted to look at him, but his eyes were too much for me to understand. There was a noise inside– the shatter of glass.
He said to me, “You know, I love women, like, I really do. I like to be around them… When I was a kid, my first crush was on my cousin. The women in my life were really the ones who raised me. They were always sweet to me and as the saying goes, it takes a village. But I was a good kid, shy– shy like you. Anyway, my cousins were always around, and I loved my one cousin who always babysat me. In my eyes, she was beyond perfect. There was something about being known without having to explain who I am.”
Mickey took his hands out of his pocket. Everyone around us dispersed. The night became darker, and it was just Mickey and I in a void. Chiron was directly above him.
“This was so long ago, but she was my very first crush. My very first love. I was a child, innocent, but I knew I loved her.”
The words were lulled but crawling. They took their time walking through the air, finding my ears.
Mickey touched the memory as he told it.
“She died when I was still very young. Cancer. She was in her twenties. I still miss her to this day.”
He swept the words into the air, watching them float back down to earth with grave fear. There was a picture of a swan reflected in his eyes as though the memory was being televised.
I saw his eyes breathe lively.
Water’s words; beautiful release.
The story entered the page:
I am quiet, hands wide, goosebumps on my thighs.
That was yours to hold, and I am not asking to help you.
I don’t know what to say — I’m so sorry.
I’ve written this for his eyes.
Hi,
How does it feel to release like that? Now the words are no longer a secret for yours to chew; they are a feast at the table. Everyone is dissecting them with each bite, but can I tell you something? —
Thanks for sharing that with me.
He didn’t let the moment linger; I let my naked wrist become a home for his lips. A kiss made a sound on my body, and I wondered if I could keep this memory for myself or if I should let myself linger in its meaning.
I wondered if I should let it become my soul or if I could share it with my diary.
Was it even mine to share?
His voice was gruff like he had just woken up, “Fuck it all.”
Maybe not.
Mickey’s back was completely upright.
The bartender came outside for a second. I read her face, studied it for her deepest secret. She was staring at the roads, how they were laced with dirty water spat out by fiction-less people. A slight turn of her lips, down and down, as though she had lost sight of her image in the mirror. The water was too murky to find her own meaning.
Are we all the same?
I turned to watch Mickey keel over my body. I expected a kiss on his lips, but he was only covering me in his shadow.
Mickey…
We were tree and bird.
Death, to me, was release. My mother was mean to me. My sister was innocent but she was truly my burden. When they left this world, there was a new cavity in my teeth, but my braces were off and I was allowed relief.
Nobody’s ever taken from me because — baby, I never had anything to begin with.
For Mickey, death took purity. It took, and it killed.
It took love away from his breath, and all that was left was himself.
He’d touched the sun — he had the sun — but then it took away his breath, so he slowly descended into the night where he found me. And I was a wolf, I was a fairy. I was something that didn’t exist.
But for a second, I didn’t care.
He stood there before me, writing on the walls with a marker. A tag — a word:
Scam.
Does he belong here with me?
Solipsistic Girl: Ambient Boy.
I never ever want to hurt you, even though you’ve hurt me.
Why does everything have to die?
Where does all the time go: Mickey and I left the bar, and it felt like all that changed was the pace of my heart. Our fingers brushed; he almost held my hand. I let my soul hang limp.
But I could hear his mind asking me, what are you doing?
What am I doing?
I am listening.
You said my name. A plane stopped above us. A bird crystalised. There was a pause in the story — I cried on the pages of fiction; they became soaking wet. Reality bled through:
You called me Anna.
I’d say your name, but I know I shouldn’t.
You are not my painting; you are a whole other world.
All you ever wanted was a vague mixture of everything and nothing. What’s the difference you may ask–
And to that, I say, good question. Infinite, the metaphor of question.
I wish the questions would collapse. I wish I was buried under the soil.
You,
My mind is still deciphering the show.
For a while, I wanted you to suffer. That is not my intention: to make you suffer from my work. Actually, I hope you find this beautiful.
Why can’t it be beautiful to sort through one’s own mind? I do it too much.
At first, I wrote this to talk about power dynamics and femininity.
It transformed into something else — I simply remembered.
Oh, memory. How sweet you can be…
Here I am! Squeezing memory out, letting it wrap around my chest.
And you,
Take this in whatever way you want to take it–
Scream.
Yell.
Hex me.
Know that I am here not to tell your story. I am only telling mine.
Like an eagle,
Like a final breath,
Do you ever think about when we first met?